Iran, sanctions and moral authority

Ron Forthofer

For over two decades, US neo-cons have been pushing for an attack on Iran on the pretext that it was developing nuclear weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been a key player in this effort, exerting as much pressure as he and the Israeli lobby can for an US attack. Netanyahu also often threatens that Israel might attack Iran. Note these are the same people who pushed for the illegal US attack on Iraq based on the bogus claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Fortunately, the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concluded that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons program. This finding undercut President George W. Bush’s campaign for an attack. Furthermore, this NIE conclusion opened the door for diplomacy.

In 2015, President Obama, despite intense opposition by Netanyahu and many of his ardent supporters in Congress, committed the US to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This deal among Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US was designed to prevent the creation of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Key to achieving this goal was the intrusive monitoring of Iranian facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even many former Israeli military and intelligence officials supported this agreement. All the nations involved in the JCPOA, including the US, agree with the IAEA that Iran is fully complying with the accord.

However, in May 2018 President Trump violated the agreement by withdrawing the US and re-implementing harsh US sanctions against Iran. This violation did tremendous damage to US credibility and made future negotiations more difficult since the US clearly cannot be trusted to honor its commitments.

Following Trump’s decision, the other participants initially said they would still honor their word. However, since then, the US has been attempting to coerce Britain, France and Germany as well as other nations to go along with the sanctions by threatening them with the choice between trade with Iran or with the US. The goals of these sanctions, economic warfare, seem to be the destruction of the Iranian economy that will inflict sufficient hardship on the Iranian people and lead to the overthrow of their government. Dream on.

In addition, Secretary of State Pompeo recently announced the formation of the Iran Action Group to coordinate US policy towards Iran. Its focus is on the 12 unrealistic demands Pompeo made of Iran in his speech in May. That speech was not diplomacy but, essentially, a demand for Iran to surrender its sovereignty. If these sanctions, economic warfare, don’t work, there’s always the military option.

It appears as if the Trump administration did not learn anything from the disaster President George W. Bush created in Iraq and it subsequently spread to the entire Middle East. Trump is following the same script that the Bush administration used and is risking creating an even larger catastrophe than Iraq possibly leading to a confrontation with Russia.

Unfortunately, the US has a long record of imposing sanction on other nations. It claims that it uses sanctions to support democracy and human rights or in fighting terrorism. These stated reasons are often simply a palliative cover for advancing the interests of US banks and other corporations. Despite what a propagandized US public believes, an examination of the US record of human rights violations and war crimes shows that the US lacks the moral legitimacy to judge any other nation.

For example, the US was founded based on two original sins – the genocide of American Indians and slavery of Blacks. Both these groups were and still are denied fair and just treatment. In the international arena, the US has overthrown or supported the overthrow of governments in this hemisphere and elsewhere. A few better known examples of the many, many US staged or supported coups are Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, and Ukraine in 2014. Two major US war crimes can be included — millions killed in and the devastation of Vietnam and Iraq.

In addition, the US is the country: 1) most widely viewed as a threat to world peace in 2013; 2) that besides using torture carries out assassinations by drones; and 3) that is a long-term violator of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That the US thinks it has the moral credibility to judge other nations demonstrates its incredible hubris. Shamefully other Western nations go along with this insanity.